Monday, February 09, 2015

That’s the subject of Monday’s “Todd’s American Dispatch,” as Fox News’ Todd Starnes raised questions about radical Islamists living in the U.S.

“FBI director James Comey delivered some alarming words to law enforcement officers last week in Mississippi: There are Islamic radicals living among us – in all 50 states -- and there are open FBI cases in every state but Alaska,” Starnes said. “President Obama once told us he had Al Qaeda on the run, and he's right - they're running right across our borders and right smack into our neighborhoods.”

That guy living across the street from you who has a kind of weird accent? He's probably one.

As Americans stood horrified at the news of a Jordanian pilot burned alive by the terrorist group known as the Islamic State, one of the top law enforcement officers in the country talked about how Mississippians can fight those kind of extremist ideals within our own borders.

FBI Director James Comey, who was in the state for the second visit of his 10-year term, said there are open cases looking into individuals who may be related to ISIS/ISIL in every state in the Union except Alaska.

"Mississippi is a great state, but like all 50 states it has troubled souls that might look to find meaning in this sick, misguided way. The challenge that we face in law enforcement is that they may be getting exposed to that poison and that training in their basement," Comey said. "They're sitting there consuming and may emerge from the basement to kill people of any sort, which is the call of ISIL, just kill somebody."

So he stressed that the threat is very real, not just for military or law enforcement or the media, all of whom have been warned by the FBI that ISIS could be gunning for them, but for ordinary citizens as well.

"If you can video tape it all the better, if it's law enforcement all the better, if you can cut somebody's head off and get it on tape, what a wonderful thing in their view of the world," he continued. "That's the challenge we face everywhere."

Comey expressed particular fear that restrictions on information gathering could give terrorists more leeway because they are harder to track.

"I'm very worried about where we're drifting as a country in respect to law enforcement's ability to, with lawful process, intercept communications. I'm not talking about sneaky stuff. I'm talking about situations where we have probable cause to believe that somebody is communicating with a terrorist group," he said. "... We're drifting into a place where there are going to be large swaths of this country beyond the reach of the law."

Because of that, Comey said, citizens need to be constantly on the watch. The current climate of the world does not make it acceptable to see something and not report it.

"Ordinary folks should listen to the hair on the back of their neck," he said. "We've gone back through every homegrown violent extremist case in the United States and studied it. In every single case, someone saw something online, at a religious institution, in a family setting, at a school, that was weird, that was out of place, this person was acting in a way that didn't make sense."

Just to recap, here we have the nation's top cop telling the American people that despite the fact that absolutely nothing has changed since the Snowden revelations, the government is being hamstrung by four ACLU lawyers and a couple of bloggers from being able to sufficiently investigate terrorism. Apparently,they need even more spying power. Even just being criticized is too much.

We are letting the terrorists win. And so what we really need is to get the people spying on each other and reporting suspicious activity to the federal government. Sounds fabulous. For a police state. Todd Starnes is onboard. He's seeing terrorists around every corner. I('m sure he'll stand his ground.